Wednesday morning news: May 8, 2024

SOUND: [Explosion]

Rafah » Israeli Defense Forces — or IDF — continue targeted strikes in and around the city of Rafah. And an Israeli tank brigade has seized control of the Gaza side of the Rafah border crossing with Egypt.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby says while Israel insists that a major ground operation in the city is necessary …

KIRBY:  That's not what this is, uh, that this is, uh, an operation of limited scope, scale, and duration, um, and aimed at cutting off Hamas's ability to ship arms across the Rafah border.

Meantime, cease-fire negotiations with Hamas remain on a knife’s edge. State Dept. spokesman Matthew Miller said negotiations continue in Cairo.

MILLER:   We continue to believe that there is space to reach a deal and we are trying, uh, incredibly hard to push one over the line.

The terror group Hamas is demanding that the IDF halt their offensive saying they won’t negotiate under fire. But Israel says it will not hold its fire until there’s a cease-fire agreement in place for Hamas to free Israeli hostages.

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Campus protests » Anti-Israel/Pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Chicago. The school let the protesters back on campus after police cleared out their week-long encampment Tuesday.

Similar demonstrations are breaking out worldwide, including Berlin. Demonstrators clashed with police …

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… and the at the University of Amsterdam.

SOUND: [Demonstration]

Police there detained nearly 200 people.

Education Secretary grilled by lawmakers over anti-Semitism » Meantime, in Washington members of a House committee pressed the secretary of education about the recent rise anti-Semitism on American campuses.

Secretary Miguel Cardona told lawmakers hate has no place in higher education

CARDONA: Every student deserves to learn in an environment where they can feel free to be themselves without discrimination or fear for their safety.

And he said his department is working with schools to address the issue.

Members also pressed him about the botched rollout of the free application for federal student aid.

Northern Mariana Islands Congressman Gregorio Sablan said college hopefuls in his district could only fill it out if they said they were foreign.

SABLAN: Could I please have your commitment that this will be resolved before the next school year?

CARDONA: Absolutely.

The glitches have made it tough for students to finalize college plans.

House Judiciary probe of FBI's handling of Trump doc case » A federal judge is postponing President Trump’s classified documents trial indefinitely as House Republicans investigate whether the FBI mishandled evidence in the case.

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan…

JORDAN: The physical documents didn’t match up with the scanned documents and someone might say, when you do that, that is called tampering with evidence, something you’re not supposed to do.

Special counsel Jack Smith admits documents seized from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home are no longer in their original order.

Jordan says that raises questions about whether the documents were altered.

JORDAN: We got Jack Smith mishandling documents. All the while he’s charging President Trump for supposedly mishandling information. You can’t make this stuff up.

Trump’s accused of mishandling national security records and hiding them from the FBI.

His trial was set to start in less than 2 weeks, but on Tuesday Judge Aileen Cannon postponed it indefinitely citing “myriad and interconnected pre-trial issues.”

Trump trial » Meantime, in Manhattan jurors heard more testimony in week-3 of New York’s criminal business fraud trial against Trump.

Pornographic film actress Stephanie Clifford — known publicly as Stormy Daniels — took the stand. Clifford claims she had a sexual encounter with Trump in 2006.

He says it never happened.

His former lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid Clifford $130,000 to keep quiet.

Trump says there was no fraud committed, that he paid money to his lawyer for legal expenses, and that’s exactly how it was logged in the books.

TRUMP:  We didn't put it down as construction costs, uh, the purchase of sheetrock, the electrical cost. The legal expense that we paid was put down as legal expense. There's nothing else you could say.

Prosecutors accuse Trump of wrongly claiming the so-called hush money was a legitimate business expense.

Boy Scouts changing to a more "inclusive" name » After 114 years, the Boys Scouts of America is changing its name to Scouting America.

President and CEO Roger Krone…

KRONE: Membership is at historic lows, alright. Part of my job is to reduce all the barriers I possibly can for people to accept us as an organization and to join.

Boy Scouts’ membership is just half of what it was back in 2018 as the organization walks through bankruptcy and compensates former scouts for sexual abuse claims.

Through the years, the Scouts started welcoming girls as well as homosexual scouts and leaders. And Krone says this change is the next step.

KRONE: They can bring their authentic self, they can be who they are.

Critics accused the organization of being driven by what they called increasing “wokeness” in removing a gender reference from its name.

The name change takes effect in February.

I’m Kent Covington.

Straight ahead: Congress’s response to anti-Semitic protests on Washington Wednesday. Plus, World Tour.

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